Social Media

Measuring Your Marketing Assists

The Harvard Business Review has a great article, Advertising Analytics 2.0 in their March edition where they discuss marketers common habit of measuring performance of each channel as if they worked independently of each other.  They use of the metaphor of swim lanes and suggest how marketers need to think in terms of cross channel path-to-purchase and start to pay attention to how certain channels give an “assist” in terms of influencing a consumer to buy.

I continually see companies, both big and small, continue to view their marketing and ad campaigns through a narrow lens and fixate on channel which lead to a direct sale.  There’s a lot of consternation about the ROI of social media sites but it helps to understand the support role these channels play in getting a customer to convert. The graphic by HBR demonstrates this well:

Big Data Key to Understanding Path-To-Purchase

A recent article by David Edelman, For Big Data to Work, You Need Intuition, mentioned how big data is becoming critical to making good business decisions, however, companies need to have the right people in place looking for the right information. It’s imperative for the data scientist or analyst to have a marketing experience and good intuition on how to make sense of the data and put it to use.

Edelman also mentioned how important  it is to look closely at the consumer decision journey as opposed to just looking at transaction data. With consumers using more online resources to research and evaluate products and service there can be a points in the consumer’s journey where they are falling off. If you’re not providing the information that they’re looking for at the right time and the right place, you are going to lose them.

This is where big data is going to help you evaluate where your “leakage is occurring.”

The New Consumer Decision Journey:

Now Decision Journey

 

Is Your Customer Service Team on Social Media?

Is your call center staff on Twitter, Facebook and/or other social media channels?  If not, they should be. This department is best suited for addressing customer concerns and issue resolution yet many of these teams are not engaging on social media.  Your marketing department is probably seeing customer service conversations on social channels but are they engaging the customer as they should and are you measuring those engagements over time?

The chart below gives you a good indication of why you need to start training your customer service teams how to use social media:

 

Humor Lost on Brands

I was just reading an interesting post on Socialmedia Today called The Engagement Marketing Disconnect Between Consumers and Brands Rages On and found an interesting nugget with regards to consumer engagement and brand’s lack of understanding of online consumer behavior.  The article’s author, Steve Olenski, made an interesting case based on findings from Forbes Insights and Turn called “The New Rules of  Engagement: Measuring the Power of Social Currency” but there was one graph that stood out for me:

http://blogs-images.forbes.com/marketshare/files/2012/11/ForbesInsights5.png

A rather large 67% of consumers say that it’s the funny posts that get their attention but only 14% of marketers look to craft social posts that are humorous or irreverent.  There seems to be a very large disconnect here.

More brands are starting to do a better job of measuring consumer’s engagement with their brand however they’re still not able or willing to put out content that will best boost that consumer’s willingness to share content.  While humor is certainly subjective, there needs to be a willingness of brands to be bold and inject a little levity into their posts.  It’s this human element that companies have to address if they ever want to truly connect with their customers.

 

Organizational Digital Stress Disorder

This past month I visited a few friends and colleagues I that haven’t seen for a while and who all work in the digital marketing arena. Through my conversations over coffee and lunch I’ve picked up on a common theme. Apparently they all seem to be suffering from Organizational Digital Stress Disorder (ODSD).

This isn’t to be confused with being overwhelmed by digital media (Simple Digital Stress Syndrome) or over reliance on your mobile device (Smartphone Psychosis), which are serious conditions but can be easily rectified by turning off your computers or smart phones and go for a walk.

ODSD is something more serious. It comes from working in a company or agency in a digital marketing capacity and being faced with the inability to convince the executives, colleagues, partners, stakeholders, janitors that a digital revolution is here and that their organizations must take a new approach to engaging their customers.

The pace of consumer adoption of mobile, social and digital technologies is greatly outrunning corporate america’s ability to keep up and as digital marketers we see it plain as day. Just read Mashable or even Adage and you you start to realize that this is something serious and if not acted upon quickly, the organization you’re working for will soon be irrelevant and possibly out of business.

Someone suffering from ODSD feels compelled to act on this information but unfortunately nobody believes them (or wants to) even when they’ve clearly layout the need for the organization to evolve from product/service promotion to content creators and social conversationalists.

To the “classically trained” marketer this sounds like a lot of mumbo jumbo. They might say things like “this is how we’ve always done things” or “social media is just a fad.” Even worse, they might think they’re already on the cutting edge of technology because they just created a mobile app that condenses all their irrelevant marketing messages in one hard to read iPhone app.

This type of behavior and attitude towards change is the leading cause of ODSD and can manifest itself in many different ways such as hives, headaches, pulling of hair (yours and others), kicking things, wondering if its all worth it, and the need to go live in Tahiti in a thatched hut.

To be fair, change is not easy for many people and organizations (especially large companies) so it won’t come easy. Thus ODSD will be around for a while and I’m seriously thinking there’s a need here for a specialization in ODSD therapy. I’ve always felt a missed my calling at a psychologist so I may look into this but in the meantime I’ve found some other interesting disorder’s stemming from ODSD.

Do you or anyone you know suffer from any of these disorders:

Digital Schizophrenic Messaging Disorder (DSMD) – Severe form of psychopathology characterized by the breakdown of integrated marketing messaging throughout all channels (traditional & digital), withdrawal from the reality that your sending mixed messages through your marketing channels, emotional distortions of why you’re not getting a good ROI on your multiple Facebook posts, and disturbed thought processes (inability to trust that digital media can be measured).

Dissociative Web Development Identity Disorder (DWDID) – A dissociative mental disorder in which five or more distinct marketing messages exist within the same website (above the fold); formerly known as multiple message disorder.

Chronic Change Management Stress (CCMS) – A continuous state of arousal in which an individual perceives the need to change a company’s cultural attitudes towards digital marketing but not having the internal resources available to do with it.

Latent Liking (LL) – In Freudian dream analysis, the need to find hidden meaning of a Facebook like.

Manic Monitoring (MM) – A component of bipolar blogging disorder characterized by periods of extreme elation, unbounded euphoria about the number of retweets and Facebook comments your recent blog post generated followed by extreme depression in learning that it was all just spam.

Social Media Psychosis (SMP) – Loss of contact with reality that usually includes: false beliefs about Facebook going away soon, delusions that consumers want to share your 10 minute product informational video with friends; reading articles that claim that social media is dead (hallucinations).

High Tweeting Tolerance (HTT) – A situation that occurs with continued use of Twitter in which an individual requires more tweets to achieve the same effect.

If any of these afflictions apply to you, please call me and we can schedule an appointment. The Dr. is in!

P.S.

My treatment includes:

Cognitive Content Therapy – A type of psychotherapeutic treatment that attempts to change feelings and behaviors about helping an organization change the way it treats its customers and respecting the customer’s desire not to be hit over the head with marketing messages.

Keeping Your Mobile App Simple

Recently I’ve started running again after a long hiatus from the sport and needed a mobile app that could help me keep track of my runs to in order to gage my progress.  Previously I was runner but stopped running after I did the Twin Cities Marathon in 2007; finishing in an excruciating 6 hours and 5 minutes. Apparently you have to train for one of these things. After that experience I thought 26 miles in 6 hours was enough exercise for 5 years but the time has come to get back on that horse

Unfortunately, the search for a good app has taken longer than I expected as quite a few of them have either not worked correctly or have been too unwieldy to navigate.  All I want is a simple app to track my runs and tell me how many calories I’ve burned after stumbling and wheezing my way to a 14 minute mile.

It shouldn’t be that difficult to find a simple yet effective app to do this yet many of the apps I found make the mistake of trying to load the user with too much information and functionality.  One has to keep in mind that the most successful apps are shockingly simple.  (I finally chose Endomondo)

Take for example Instagram. They started out with a very cumbersome app that tried to cram in too much functionality such as a clunky check-in function.  Fortunately for them they figured it out quickly and determined that people want it easy and fast. That realization netted then close to a billion dollars from Facebook’s buyout.

I was at a recent presentation at Apple’s headquarters in Silicon Valley this year in which they were describing their iAd platform, and they mentioned something that has stuck with me.  They spoke about how companies have started to design for mobile apps before they design for the web to ensure a simple clean design which improves usability.  What a great idea; so simple yet so hard to achieve.

We in the marketing and communications field do have a tendency to want to cram all of our strategies into each one of our channels from Facebook content to website links, but we need to step back and identify/align specific strategies and goals to individual channels.

So when thinking about your next mobile app, try to avoid these pitfalls:

Feature Overload
Using too many features:  One of the most common mistakes that a developer makes while creating an app is packing it with too many features and functionalities. This means they are actually “stuffing” the app with features and in the end, all that it does is confuse the end-users. The best thing to do is to use no more than 2-3 features while developing an app.

Complicated User Interface
Making the UI too complicated: The UI (User Interface) is an important part of any app. If the UI of an app is too complex, it will affect the usability for the end-users. This is bad news. Therefore, don’t over complicate the user-interface and stick to the ‘keep it simple’ principle, so that even a user, who is using your app for the very first time, finds it easy to use.

For more detailed tips on creating functional and clean mobile apps, here are some resources:

Designing a Mobile App? Don’t Make These 10 Mistakes
8 Tips for More Tapworthy Apps and Mobile-Friendly Sites
5 Simple Tips for Designing Better iPhone Apps

SMBs Still Slow to Embrace Mobile Marketing

While many small and medium-sized businesses are planning to increase their digital spending budget within the next 12 months, only 2 in 10 are currently employing mobile marketing strategies.  Amazingly 29% of SMBs haven’t even heard of the term mobile marketing, which is mind blowing considering most SMB execs and owners probably use mobile devices in their daily lives.

In fact, a recent study found that 94 percent of the small-business users surveyed believe their mobile devices make them more efficient. So what gives?  They use these devices but they’re not seeing the value in marketing terms.

One reason I believe SMBs are so slow to pick up on this marketing avenue is that mobile technologies have moved so fast that marketing execs are too hesitant to try something they deem as untested.  SMBs aren’t alone in their trepidation as I’ve worked with a few Fortune 500 companies who still haven’t had the gumption to dip their toes into this medium.

It’s been my experience that while big business have the cash to try new mobile marketing strategies they tend to be more conservative in their willingness to try new things.  SMB’s obviously don’t have the endless funds the big boys possess but they do have the most to gain by trying this growing trend.  Especially if their competitors are already in this space.

In fact, 84% of U.S. small businesses using mobile marketing see increase in new business activity, according to a recent study by Web.com.  ComScore figures there are now 82.2 million Americans using smartphones and this figure is going to continue to grow quickly. When it comes down to it SMBs should take advantage of mobile marketing to gain advantage in three key areas:

  • Provide better service to existing customers
  • Attract more local customers
  • Gain competitive advantage

It won’t be long before everyone will be carrying around computers in their pockets so the sooner SMBs can harness this trend the better competitive advantage they’ll have in the future.   And by future I mean tomorrow.

 

How Social Media Affects the Consumer’s Decision to Buy

Google recently came out with some research called Zero Moment of Truth that very clearly and convincingly lays out the business case for social media and how it impacts the consumer’s buying journey.

Google states that the Zero Moment of Truth is the moment when a consumer picks up a laptop, mobile phone or other wired device to research a product or serve and then decide what to buy.   The research shows that more and more, people are making their buying decisions well before they get to the store.

Recently, I’ve been telling anyone who will listen (ad nauseum, perhaps) that there’s been a fundamental shift in how consumers gather data and how they’re using that data to make buying decisions for products from new cars to ball point pens.

They are increasingly turning to online social interactions to check out ratings and reviews (which is a form of social sharing) for opinions on products and services and searching what a brand’s Facebook Pages or Twitter account has for deals and insights as to what’s new.  They’re also using sites like YouTube and Vimeo to research how-to videos or demos on how products are used. Here’s some interesting stats that highlight this behavior:

  • 70% of Americans now say they look at product reviews before making a purchase
  • 79% of consumers now say they use a smartphone to help with shopping
  • 83% of moms say they do online research after seeing TV commercials for products that interest them

All these social interactions can be quickly and easily found using search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. For a long time the conventional wisdom was that people won’t go out of their way to research things like laundry detergent and butter but in fact they do.  Google’s research clearly shows they do.

The graphic below shows when those Zero Moments of Truth are happening:

Average purchase cycles for three diverse categories

If you don’t believe what Google’s saying, the Harvard Business Review came out with some research from McKinsey & Company that supports Google’s thinking. (See my recent article Consumer Decision Journey in the Digital Age)  They’ve actually documented this behavior in 2009 and Google backs up their assertion that brands need to be at that digital evaluation process or Zero Moment of Truth when the consumer looks for information.  If a brand isn’t showing up when consumers do their search, they are losing sales.

Where social media really makes its impact is in the advocacy phase of the consumer’s buying journey after they’ve taken advantage of a service or brought a product home and used it.  If they like it (or not) they will go on Facebook, Amazon.com, Twitter, blogs, Consumer Reports, or brand website and let you know what they think.  And for the first time in history, this word-of-mouth communication is being digitally archived making one person’s advocacy someone else’s Zero Moment of Truth.

I highly recommend you check out Google’s research (it’s free), watch all the videos and read it in its entirety.  This Zero Moment of Truth will become, if it’s not already, the most important impetus for a customer to buy your company’s goods and/or services.

How Far Did That Tweet Go?

As I was perusing the intertubes today on my phone I suddenly received a flurry of notifications from my Twitter app telling me that 21 people had mentioned me (@jbsem.com).  I usually don’t receive this many mentions in a week let alone all at once so I clicked to see what happened.

Apparently, @MariSmith, bless her heart, who’s a prolific tweeter (106,000 followers), just re-tweeted a blog post of mine (7 Keys to Choosing the Right Social Media Monitoring Tool).  Another 20+ people then re-tweeted her tweet. All of a sudden a good number of people were clicking on the link to my post.

This got me to wondering how many people did this one tweet reach so I brought up my online tools and got to work. There are some robust systems out there that could have provided a complete view of clicks, reach, impressions, blog visits, etc., all in one dashboard but those cost some serious change.

So instead, I used a variety of free online tools that produce reports similar to the more sophisticated platforms; it just took a little more work and some knowhow.  Here’s what I used.

Bit.ly

Bit.ly is a URL shortener that shrinks long URLs into ones that are more conducive to 140 character limits. It also has tracking capability that measures the number of times people click on the URL and where they’re coming from.  Using my URL http://bit.ly/j5xc3j it showed me that 42 people clicked on a  bit.ly link to get to my post; 32 of which clicked on the link I created.  This means 10 people used a different bit.ly link to get to my content.

TweetReach

This is a simple tool that lets you easily gauge the reach of a tweet, link, #hashtag, phrase or keyword and shows the reach and exposure data for those tweets.  I typed in my bit.ly link and it showed that my tweet as of June 6 reached 129,137 people via 18 tweets; producing 142,627 Impressions.  It’s a nice quick and easy way to see how far a tweet has gone. See below.

SocialMention

This is a free social media search and analysis platform that provides an easy way to track and measure what people are saying about you or your company across the web’s social media landscape.  The tool lacks the customizable reporting capability other monitoring tools provide, however you can’t beat the price (free). This tool showed me that mentions, using my bit.ly link, had a sentiment ratio at an excellent 21 positive to 0 negative.  This due to the fact @MariSmith included “LIKE!!” in her tweet. I love her.   While I have serious doubts about automated sentiment analysis, it’s a quick and dirty way to see if good or bad things are being said about you.  The tool also uses metrics like strength, reach and passion of the posts. You can click here to see how they define these metrics (just hover over the number and the definition will appear).

Google Analytics

I really don’t know what marketers would do without Google Analytics. It’s by far one of the best and easiest tools to use in measuring and monitoring your website and/or blog’s traffic. And its FREE.   It provided me with metrics on the number of visits I received to my post, the time people spent reading my post, the number of people leaving the page without further clicks (bounce rate), percent of new visits, source of the traffic, etc.   I won’t go into all the detail other than to say that this information is critical for me in determining what content is most useful and how well my content is being picked up by search engines.  If you don’t have this program set up, just ask your web master and they’ll do it for you and give you access.

It was a fun day today as it’s always interesting to see the impact of your online social activities and it’s a great way to really understand the power of social platforms and the tools used to measure them.

Aligning Social Media Insights with Consumer Buying Habits – CMOs Are Missing the Boat

IBM Global CMO Study

IBM has recently released their IBM Global CMO Study for 2011 and once again, social media comes up very high in what CMOs see as an area of concern for the future of their business. Other areas of concern were the data explosion, proliferation of channels and devices and shifting consumer demographics; all of which tie into social media.

The one tidbit I found most interesting in this study was CMOs are still predominantly relying on traditional sources of information such as focus groups and studies that focus on understanding markets rather than individuals. It seems that most are still ignoring what people are saying about them through social channels. Case in point:

  • 26 percent are tracking blogs
  • 42 percent are tracking third-party reviews
  • 48 percent are tracking consumer reviews

In a past blog post, called Consumer Decision Journey in the Digital Age, I highlight a McKinsey & Company study that shows how more and more consumers are using these social channels to make their buying decisions. However, organizations have yet to leverage these tools which can provide crucial insights into how customers and influencers think and behave.

The graph below shows the sources of information CMOs are using to make strategic marketing decisions and as you can see most are paying more attention to markets than individuals. The key sources to understanding individuals (highlighted in yellow) still are ranked relatively low:


It’s quite obvious that CMO’s have not yet aligned their strategies with how consumers are behaving today and aren’t keeping up with the trends in technology.  Therefore, I see a big role for social media going forward and the companies that embrace this trend will be well positioned to be leaders in their industries.